doyle

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Instead of being asleep at 10:17 on 23 July 2011, kitt created this:

Okay, for the first weekend in three, Doyle and Shirley aren't heading out of town, and I'm not heading up to play with their kitties. I'm somewhat saddened by this, as they are *awesome* kitties and wow, do I love that kitty time. Well, that and their hammock.

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Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 19:05 on 22 March 2010

At work today, Chris called Michael from the parking lot, asking "Hey, did you know the Chowder Mobile is in the parking lot?" When Michael first repeated the question, he did it loud enough for everyone to hear, though no one was really paying attention. I mean, I wasn't paying attention until the statement, "And there's a cupcake mobile next to it?" when my body spontaneously leapt six feet into the air and landed with a $20 bill in my hand, feet moving me to the door.

To say "Excited about the Cupcake Mobile" is like saying "Willing to breathe to stay alive." Yes, both are accurate.

My steps on the quarter mile walk to the mobiles, which had to be at the FARTHEST. POINT. POSSIBLE. went from "Hey, I'm outside, this is great" to "OMFG I'M GOING TO HAVE A CUPCAKE!"

No, really.

So, we FINALLY finish our hike, uphill both ways, with my telling Michael how spectacularly awesome SxSW was, and how I'm still riding the high of the event, and I realize that I have no idea what I'm supposed to order at the Chowder Mobile. I do the only reasonable thing: I have Michael order for me. "If you like lobster, you have to order the Lobster Roll," he said. So, my order was, of course, "I'm told I have to order the Lobster Roll," which made the guy in the truck smile. For a $15 sandwich, it better make me smile, too, I thought.

Michael ordered after me, and handed me a one dollar bill, telling me that either it had fallen out of my pocket, or his wallet, he wasn't sure, but here, take it. Confused, I tried to hand it back, but he was having none of it.

Okay, one dollar for me.

Of course, as soon as the adult part of ordering lunch was over, I turned, without my meal, and only halfway flew over to the cupcake mobile. I say halfway, because my thump on the side of the truck when I arrived alerted me that I hadn't actually left the ground yet.

Michael came over behind me, and started talking to the woman in the truck. How often are you here (every Monday)? Can you park closer (maybe)? How can we find you (twitter)? Do you cater (yes)?

I stood there, with my nose just over the side of the window, my hands next to it, peering in, waiting for a break. My brain was in a loop, thinking, "Cupcake... cupcake... cupcake..." as they continued talking. And talking. And talking.

KILLING ME! I started bouncing.

Yes, that's right, a woman old enough to have a kid in high school was bouncing on the side of a cupcake truck next to the San Francisco Bay.

And it was awesome.

More awesome was the fact that I could buy TWO cupcakes, at $3 each, because Michael had handed me the dollar over at the Chowder Mobile. I didn't have to choose between chocolate and lemon, because, you know, being an adult means YOU CAN HAVE BOTH.

And both I did.

I know which client office I'll be working from next Monday. And the following Monday. And the Monday after that. Possibly the Monday after that, too.

It's been one year since I started working at Doyle's company with him. One year, and five projects later, I'm still working with him. Not all of the projects have been smooth projects, and not all of the projects have been with Doyle. I've had two projects I've done completely independently of him, initially feeling guilty that I was assigned the COOL! NEW! project while Doyle was assigned the fix this site or upgrade that project or work on this long slow project that needs to get done but no one really wants to do projects.

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Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 23:42 on 30 April 2009

Heather arranged for a game night tonight. Andy came over early with six eggs, to bring our 30 eggs up to 36 eggs. Fortunately, we used up four of them immediately with our double crepe recipe, to feed the group who was heading over: Heather, Andy, Chookie, Doyle, me, maybe Shirley and maybe Kris after his geetar lesson.

We started the evening with tile rummy, when only Chookie, Andy, Heather and I were around. I think we spent more time explaining the tiles and the game than we actually spent playing. The game was close, with all of us having one tile until Andy had none.

Doyle showed up while we were playing tile rummy. Now, I'm very excited Doyle showed up. Last time we played, Kris beat Andy and I in all three games. I needed Doyle to show up and take Kris down a notch. That Doyle has won nine games in a row is of no consequence in my mind.

Our first game was much longer than I expected it to be. To my surprise, on the round before the end, I realized if I snagged the longest road (as Doyle says, "the false god") from Andy, and built a city, I could go from last place to 10 points and win. So I did.

Not only did Kris not win (since he wasn't playing, this was a given), but I did. WOW! Not bad for my fourth time playing. Though, I guess that's part of the charm of Catan: a lot of the game play is designed to level the playing field, so that even sucky-suck players can get lucky sometimes.

"For someone who doesn't like to have her picture taken, you sure take a lot of pictures."

I had decided this morning that given the lack of interest I had yesterday at the design conference and the overwhelming pressure I was receiving last night to be in the office, I would do well to resign myself to writing off the conference as a learning experience (Lesson learned? Never, ever go to a conference alone again) and earn money today.

I also decided to skip lunch and work the extra two hours lunch might take. I quickly learned the folly of my decision when I realized I had left my lunch at home, so off to lunch I went, half an hour after I had arrived at work.

As we were walking into the restaurant, Doyle was humored by my camera out, and commented about all of my picture taking, while showing me how he really felt about it.

Lunch was at a brewery, where we met up with a former co-worker, who had just found a new job (lots of cheers!). For the most part, I like brewery food, but today I was especially excited about having fish and chips, which I have been, strangely enough, craving for a while now. Might have been because it's been a month since I had some last.

To prove Doyle wrong, I took a picture of myself after lunch, catching Michael just before he started panicking about where he left his sunglasses.

Um.... on my face?

On the way out the door, one of the guys noticed a Lamborghini parked across the street. As we paused to chat a few more minutes with the ex-coworker, we watched the car. We speculated about its owner, laughing and suggesting it belonged to the old guy who just exited the donut shop the car was parked in front.

To our shock, horror, amazement and delight, the car DID belong to the old guy. Several elder jokes later, we all hoped the old guy would just peel out of the lot. He didn't, but if he had, he would have been all of our hero and inspiration.

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Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 23:59 on 18 April 2009

Before I went off to Alex's birthday party, I made 7 dozen buttons for Beer Train 2009. Beer Train is a pub crawl that starts in Sunnyvale, ends in Belmont, takes all day, tours five bars, and is the social event of the year. One could say decade, except that it happens every year.

Doyle asked me to make the buttons. Given how much I lurve my buttons, a chance to break out my button maker cannot be passed by.

I hurried home after eating my cupcake and jumping in the jump house and, of course, giving Alex the biggest hug and thanks before he went down for his name, I dashed back home to pick up Kris. Kris has signed up for Beer Train. I had not. I figure, dang, man, the whole day to myself without any client expectations or work to do? Sign me up for that, not an always-on drink fest. I know how to take care of my not-so-inner introvert.

I had to wait a short while after dashing home for Kris to finish up his work. He had originally intended to work late last night, get up around six am, go for a training run before the temperature outside was too hot, finish up any work he needed to do, then head to Beer Train. I somehow, I'm still not sure how, convinced him that, no, he needed sleep. If he was going to spend all of today drinking, and going to bed fairly late, something had to give: work or run, but not sleep. Definitely not sleep.

He was still working when I arrived back home, making me even more satisfied that I had convinced him to do the right thing.

Around 1, I drove Kris to the downtown Sunnyvale starting pub. We had a slightly difficult time finding the right bar, as, for some retarded reason, the short block of Murphy Avenue from Washington to Evelyn has four bars, two of them with Murphy in their names.

Eventually we found the place, and I dropped both Kris and the buttons off.

On my way out of the bar, Kyle and Colleen, both conductors on the beer train, were across the street, having lunch before the train rides. I wandered over to talk to them, and had a wonderful conversation with them. The topic wasn't always so wonderful (cancer came up), but catching up with the highlights of their lives was great.

I went home and spent the day putzing. I did laundry. I sorted crap on my desk. I scanned papers. I walked the dogs. I caught up on tasks. Essentially, I had great day, doing nothing much, and lots, all at the same time.

Meanwhile, Kris was off on his grand drinking train adventure. At one point, there were two stations within Palo Alto, so Kris and Andy left the first bar with everyone else, and ran, drunk, to the next station. They ended up running along the tracks, hopping fences, getting stuck on the fences, stopping, almost puking but not quite, arriving early enough to watch the rest of the train pull into the station. I'm not sure if the run was worth the puking, but the adoration from the rest of the group seemed to be.

I wish I had left my second camera with Kris.

Around 10PM, I hopped into my car, and drove up to Belmont, where everyone was at the last bar on the trip. I arrived, and was immediately confronted with a confessions from Kris. He prefaced with, "I have a drunken confession to make, are you ready for it?" What is a girl to think with this introduction?

Well, turns out, two female friends on the trip were having a contest to see which could kiss the most number of boys on the ride up. Kris was willing, and kissed one of them. He was okay with it, she freaked out a little bit. When he told me this, all worried and innocent-like, I burst out laughing. I then went up to the friend and let her know that I was humoured by the incident and in no way upset.

Really, I think Kris has a long way to go before he catches up to me on the scanalous things I've done while married. A LONG way.

Some time later, Roshan came up to me and relayed a conversation he had had with Kris earlier, which also humoured me.

"So, Kitt is picking you up from the Sunnyvale train station?"

"No, she's coming up here to pick me up."

*blink*

*blink* *blink*

"You have the best wife ever."

"Ssssh! Don't tell anyone. I don't want to share."

We ended up dropping Beth and Jeremy off in Palo Alto (with a running commentary on my driving from Jeremy that clearly indicated he had never driven in Los Angeles), and Andy at his home, before heading home. I made sure Kris drank a LOT of water before going to bed. Here's hoping for no headache in the morning.

Having been gone for a short while, I felt it necessary to head into the office today, and managed to catch a ride with Doyle. Unfortunately for me, he brought his lunch today. Shirley had been cooking this weekend, so when Doyle brought his lunch, he brought some extra for me, too.

At one point, he mentioned this to me, and asked, "Do you want a slice of pumpkin bread?"

Let's see.... pumpkin bread... Shirley's cooking... yes, yes, I do.

He handed me the bread. When I opened it up, I noticed that not only did I have tasty pumpkin bread, but I also managed to swing the butt of the loaf!

Holy moly did I score big! WHOO!

I mentioned this to Doyle, as just how incredibly generous he was being, and asked if he was sure. He said, yeah, he did notice that he gave me the best piece, but he had already eaten a couple slices, so go ahead and have the best one.

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Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 23:14 on 23 February 2008

Yeah, so, Doyle invited Kris and I out to dinner. Since we closed the office, I haven't seen him much. Which sucks, actually, as he's a really good companion, coworker and friend. He's been inviting us to events, we just haven't been going.

So, when he invited us out, even if I didn't want to go to the main event, I still wanted to go to dinner with Doyle and Shwu.

The plan was go to the Tofu House. When we arrived, Kris was immediately suspicious. We had eaten here years ago. The food was both awful and potentially very dangerous for Kris, as the soup items were made with fish broth. I vaguely recall being unable to eat my dish as the first bite burned my tongue, both with fire heat and fire hot.

After confirming the broth wasn't fish broth (plain water!), we decided to stay.

All I can say is that it was a REALLY good thing we had Shirley, Steffi, Jimmy and that Asian half of Doyle with us. Kris and I were some of the few non-Asian people in the restaurant and BY FAR the whitest. You know, the white people who can't eat spice? Yeah, that's me.

I thought about trying the "no spice" option, but I did want SOME flavor in my tofu, since I wasn't ordering a meat dish. I was entertained by the menu somewhat by still being able to sound out the Korean letters and words, even if I don't know what the hell I'm saying.

Note to self: really learn a language, okay? This half-ass knowledge of German, Korean and Spanish really sucks. Learn more than English already.

The meal ended up being just simply delicious. I'm not sure that Steffi and Jimmy knew about my current picture taking habits, but at least Doyle and Shirley were nonplussed (which, used here in the colloquial way, means "unperturbed," which is the exact opposite of the original "so surprised they don't know how to react" definition of the word - ah languages, always evolving).

I doubt Kris and I will seek the restaurant out again, but I'll definitely stop by with other friends.